Tag Archives: second chances

Throughout time, humans have elevated reason – our ability to rationalize and make judgement calls regarding good and bad decisions. In Aristotle’s Ethics he describes human beings as rational animals and identifies reason as a uniquely human characteristic. Our ability to justify and rationalize our decision-making is God-given. But dependence upon reason can also get in the way of God’s call for us to love unconditionally.

Human reason is great, but God’s wisdom shames the wise (I Corinthians 1:27). Where we see only failure, He sees a future. Where we see destruction, He sees destiny. In the middle of our mess, He begins a miracle. And so, He calls us to love like He does — unreasonably…[read more]

“The first forty days of your marriage renewal are crucial in changing the atmosphere of your relationship and generating the momentum you need to carry you forward. It won’t be easy. Breaking patterns and habitual ways of thinking and interacting will prove an enormous challenge. We’ve chosen forty days, in part, to help you establish new patterns of behavior. Throughout the Bible, forty days has been shown to be a significant time period. “

During those forty days, you need a clear set of goals and practical actions that you and your spouse can take to put your marriage restoration on a solid footing.

Setting Goals to Save your Marriage

Like any endeavor, by establishing and articulating goals it crystalizes your focus and builds a sense of urgency. During your first forty days of renewal, the two of you will want to identify a set of goals to achieve. Some of these goals will be unique to the particular challenges faced in your relationship. Others address more general issues which we found to be common amongst many couples.

Common Goals for Marriage Renewal

Break old habits and start new routines

Learn to communicate openly and authentically

Rebuild your friendship

Of course none of these goals will amount to anything if you don’t put them into action.

Taking Action to Save your Marriage

Identifying practical actions to rebuild your relationship is essential. There’s a long list of potential actions the two of you could choose to take, but we identify three common categories here.

(In the book, we describe the set of actions you and your spouse could take in much greater detail.)

Action 1: Clean house – A lot of factors contributed to the problems in your relationship. One step you want to take is to clear out any negative influences that are holding you back (alcohol or drugs, prioritizing other relationships, bad communication patterns, toxic relationships, etc.).

Action 2: Fresh start – Establish new patterns and routines to change the dynamic of your marriage. The tone and the tempo of your interaction must change. Open communication is a necessity. Prioritizing time together is essential. Grace and love must be the guiding principles of your union. Finally, daily and persistent prayer makes the whole thing work.

Action 3: Have fun – Your renewal won’t last if its all about work and sacrifice. You’ve also got to have fun together. Especially during these first forty days you need lots of time together. Time to talk, laugh, play, and recapture the friendship you had when your relationship first began.

Make it real. Make it practical. And give yourselves some grace and understanding as you work together to walk out your renewal day by day.

What’s Next?

If you want to save your marriage, you have to fully commit to the process. The first forty days are intense and require a tremendous degree of dedication. Through your combined efforts and a dependence on God, you will establish invaluable routines and a firm foundation for your new relationship. The next phase – “Healing and Rebuilding” will involve a greater focus on rebuilding trust and healing the wounds from the past. For now, enjoy the excitement and simplicity of this initial phase of renewal. The journey to restore your marriage has just begun!

The content in this post is adapted from our upcoming book (available on Amazon September 2014):

The Phoenix Marriage – Your most important earthly relationship can be restored, renewed, and reborn. God creates beauty out of ashes.

Kyle and Tammy’s Marriage Testimony: We sat down and talked with Michelle Bentham and Mindy Dawn, hosts of Bring IT Radio. They asked us questions about our marriage testimony, family, and our ministry. We shared our story – how we got together, how we fell apart, and how God’s love and grace redeemed our mess of a marriage.

The two of you started off with the best of intentions, but something went awry. Once the newness wore off and the pressures of life set in, your bond began to unravel. It may have set in very quickly, or it might have taken many years, but eventually the stress of jobs, babies, bills, and married life took its toll on your relationship.

What do you do when your marriage has crumbled? How do you piece the fragments back together? What happens when your “I do” turns into “What do I do?”

Marriage Renewal Can Save Your Family from Divorce

We have come to accept that God can save any marriage. It may be hard to believe that right now. There may be a lot of pain between the two of you. One or both of you may have said some very hurtful things. But in spite of the pain in your past, any marriage can be salvaged. It requires a tremendous level of grit and commitment, but a genuine marriage renewal is possible. In addition to our own story of marriage renewal, we have met couples and walked alongside couples that have successfully renewed their marriages. Marriages are being saved every day. Yours could be the next success story.

Three Ingredients for a Successful Marriage Renewal

Renewing your marriage isn’t easy. It’s a lot of hard work. But it also isn’t complicated. All you really need are three essential ingredients.

God at the center – The most important asset your marriage has is faith. I won’t tell you that a marriage can’t be saved without a deep and abiding faith in God, but I will tell you that we have yet to encounter a successful renewal without it. (Jeremiah 32:17, Matthew 19:26)

Two willing people – One person can’t save a relationship by themselves. It takes two willing partners to do the hard work needed to renew a marriage. Both of you must be willing to work, willing to listen to each other, willing to change, and willing to fight for your marriage. As long as you are a team, the two of you can resolve any issue in your relationship. (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)

Stubborn love – Love isn’t about goosebumps and butterflies. Romantic comedies give a false perception of real love. Marriage is less like Hugh Grant and more like Bear Grylls. You need a stubborn, tough-as-nails, love full of grit and determination. (I Corinthians 13:8)

The Marriage Renewal Process

As we describe in our up-coming book, The Phoenix Marriage, the marriage renewal process consists of three phases.

Phase 1:The First Forty Days – Initially you need an intense focus on your relationship. During this phase you prioritize your relationship above anything else. Spend time together and reconnect as a couple. Developing your communication skills, avoid negativity, speak kindness and optimism into your union, and rebuild your friendship. For some this is difficult, but for many this initial phase can be exhilarating and refreshing.

Phase 2:Healing and Rebuilding – Moving beyond the initial burst of activity in renewing your marriage, you must now begin the more long-term process of healing and rebuilding. You likely have a lot of hurt to unpack. The process of healing wounds is not a neat and clean one, because wounds heal crooked. This phase can be difficult to handle as the two of you experience emotional cycles and work through months or years of pain and neglect. Take it one day at a time and lean on the three ingredients we discussed earlier (God, your willingness to work as a team, a stubborn and unshakable love).

Phase 3:On-going Investment – Eventually the tone of your relationship will shift from healing and rebuilding to continual marriage renewal. Emotional episodes and relationship repair will occur less and less. At some point you will transition toward on-going maintenance and investment in your relationship. This level of engagement will be less than the first two phases, but far more than the level of investment you made before your renewal. Successful relationships require work. Never stop pouring love, honor, and grace into your marriage.

Marriage Renewal Ground Rules

If your marriage renewal is to be a success, the two of you must identify and agree to follow a fundamental set of ground rules.

Rule #1:Emotions are always good – No matter how hard it may be to hear your mate express the way he or she feels, you must realize that emotions are never “wrong”. There are certainly healthy and unhealthy expressions of emotion, but emotions themselves are ALWAYSvalid.

Rule #2: Raw communication is encouraged – Everyone says they want honesty, but some truths are hard to hear. No matter how difficult it might be, we have found that open, honest communication is best. Brutal, no-holds barred authenticity is necessary if the two of you are going to be able to reconnect and process the pain between you.

Rule #3: Take responsibility for your stuff – How did your marriage get into trouble in the first place? It takes two to tango and it takes two to dissolve a marriage. Each of you played some role in whittling away the strength of your relationship. Admit your faults and put your heart on the line with a soul-reaching apology for hurting your mate.

Rule #4: Everyone loses at the blame game – Your marriage doesn’t need shaming and blaming. It needs massive doses of love and grace. Each of you should take responsibility for your own baggage and enthusiastically apologize to the other as needed (see Rule #3). But thrusting blame on your partner is never the right answer.

Rule #5: Don’t try to do this alone – Renewing your marriage will necessitate that you and your spouse spend a lot of time together; but you can’t renew your marriage alone. Your marriage needs a mentor. Each of you need positive influences in your lives to help hold you accountable in your renewal journey. Surround yourselves with a support network. Isolation is dangerous.

God Can Save Any Marriage

The exact course of your marriage renewal is not predictable. Your process will likely look different from what is experienced by others, but some elements are common. Your marriage renewal requires the same three ingredients, will follow the same basic three-step process, and should adhere to all five ground rules that we identified. These concepts and more are explored in greater detail in our up-coming book, The Phoenix Marriage.

This post is the first in a series of articles on marriage renewal. We’ll unpack more details on how to save your marriage in the next several posts.

Trust. Its the cornerstone of any relationship. It holds soldiers together in foxholes and knits hearts together in marriage. The bond of trust is sacred and precious – until it’s broken.

What do you do when you cross the line that you swore you would never cross? How do you continue in a relationship when your spouse breaks your heart, trampling on the vows he or she promised to keep? Whether the result of infidelity, abuse, addiction, or neglect, the loss of trust in a relationship is devastating. And while the prospect of a bright future together looks dim, there is hope.

Rebuilding trust in your marriage is hard, because wounds heal crooked. My wife and I are 18 months into our own journey of renewal. Along the way, we have been blessed to walk alongside other couples. Some are further down the road than we are and others have just recently begun their renewal process. Through our renewal process and that of others, we have gleaned eight rules for rebuilding trust in your marriage.

Eight Rules for Rebuilding Trust in Your Marriage

Many of these rules apply equally to both parties, while others are specific to the spouse that is working to rebuild the trust (the trust healer) or the spouse that is learning to trust again (the hurting spouse).

Be patient(both of you) – There is no timetable for rebuilding trust. Forgiveness and trust are very personal matters and require a sufficient and unknown amount of time to accomplish. Don’t rush this process.

Be open(both of you) – Communicate early (before a problem can escalate) and often (as frequently as an issue occurs). Share your hearts with one another and be vulnerable in expressing your doubts and fears.

Be humble(trust healer) – Pride is the enemy of trust. You must empty yourself of ego and be willing to take any measures necessary to heal the brokenness (formal apologies, schedule changes, job changes, routine changes, etc.).

Be receptive (hurting spouse) – You must be receptive to the work that God wants to do in your heart. You also need to be open to receiving love from your spouse and accept his or her efforts to demonstrate trustworthiness.

Be understanding(trust healer) – Recognize that your spouse is hurt and those wounds will take time to heal. Throughout the healing process, be prepared to provide constant reassurance. Furthermore, the healing process may go in cycles. There will be good days and bad days, but be compassionate and understanding throughout.

Be courageous (both of you) – It is tempting to give into fear and doubt, to assume that one or both of your will break the trust again. It is tempting to believe that the outlook is hopeless. Resist all of this negativity. Be optimistic and courageous.

Be expectant (both of you) – Expect God to reveal Himself powerfully. Put your faith in Him and expect that He will meet both of you more than half-way. You aren’t in this alone. The God of Heaven is in your corner and will bless your marriage with the peace and understanding you need to re-establish confidence.

Once trust has been broken, it is difficult – but not impossible – to restore. As Jesus said, “With God all things are possible” (Matt 19:26).

Rebuilding Trust in Your Marriage is Tricky

Once trust has been broken by one or both of you, you’ll find yourselves caught in a colossal “catch-22” scenario. On the one hand, trust has been broken and is in desperate need of restoration. On the other hand, the primary means of rebuilding trust is to use words. When your words no longer carry weight, how can you possibly use them to repair the damaged trust?

As I discussed in a previous post, when you realize that talk is cheap, you must resort to demonstrating your love and commitment through action.

Actions elegantly and clearly express your heart. By their very nature, they cannot lie. Sacrificial love can be demonstrated daily. Honor can be given through your actions. Day by day and week by week trust can be rebuild through acts of love, honor, and sacrifice. In time, words can once again regain power. But that must be earned.

Rebuilding Trust in Your Marriage is Worth It

It breaks my heart that you marriage is in need of renewal. Loss of trust is devastating and rebuilding that trust is a very hard road. But take heart, because it’s worth it. Your marriage can be made new again. Like scar tissue forming over a wound, the end result might be messy but it will be stronger than it was before. Marriage renewal isn’t just about surviving, but about thriving. Tammy and I have never been so close or felt so hopeful about the road ahead. The bond of trust can be rebuilt in your marriage, too. Your best days are together are yet to come.

The content in this post is adapted from our upcoming book (available on Amazon September 2014):

The Phoenix Marriage– Your most important earthly relationship can be restored, renewed, and reborn.

When my wife and I first met, I was attracted to her personality. I loved her outlook on life and I loved the way that she made me feel when I was with her. I was drawn to her tender heart, enchanted by her great sense of humor, and of course magnetized by our chemistry. I grew to love her based upon these amazing qualities and the guidance of my wise Heavenly Father.

At some point in those first several months, a change occurred. I don’t know when it happened exactly, but my feelings for Tammy matured into an unconditional love. I ceased to care for her based upon how I felt when I was around her. Instead, I chose to love her for who she is and for the special place in my heart that she had taken up residence.

Unconditional love, held hostage by conditional hearts

Within a couple years, the pressures of blending a family and fueling a career began to take their toll on our lives. Stress robbed us of quality time, intimacy, and peace. We still loved each other, but the warm cloak of closeness and tenderness we once enjoyed had become threadbare. An overall selfishness and busyness overshadowed our home.

Did we love each other? Absolutely! We never stopped loving each other. Was love experienced? Was it FELT? Intermittently. Our love for one another was still unconditional, but our demonstration of that love had become very conditional. We handed out loving deposits as if they were a scarce resource that needed to be hoarded. Acts of love and kindness were exchanged based upon mood, stress, and the relative degree of tension or peace in our home. Our unconditional love was held hostage and sparingly demonstrated by self-absorbed, conditional hearts.

Love without boundaries

For those familiar with our story, things got worse before they got better. We came to the brink of divorce before recommitting to God, each other, and our family. A critical part of that renewal involved learning to demonstrate love without boundaries, rules, or conditions.

Early in our renewal process, we attended a weekend marriage conference from Intimate Life Ministries. We learned so much that weekend and truly grew as a couple. One of the exercises walks you through a visualization of seeing your mate as a child of God rather than as your spouse. This was a profound and life-altering experience for us both. In doing so, I learned to love my wife — on one condition.

Unconditional love — on one condition

Loving unconditionally is hard. Some days you just don’t feel loving toward your spouse at all. The epiphany comes when you stop attaching your love to how you feel. Feelings are capricious and unpredictable. My wife’s identity in Christ, on the other hand, is constant. I love my wife because He loved her first.

The one and only condition for my love is that she is a unique creation of my loving Heavenly Father. That identity makes her lovable. That relationship makes her worthy. God knew her before she was born (Psalm 139:13). Before she had a belly button, God had a purpose for her life (Jeremiah 1:5; 29:11). She was God’s child before she was my wife. The single and sufficient condition for my love, is that she is His daughter.

She deserved love and honor long before I ever proposed. It just took me a few years to wake up and realize it.

When I was eight, I got hit by a car while crossing a busy road (back in those days, kids could roam around on their own without supervision). I busted my lip, chipped my tooth, and fractured my ankle. Over a period of six weeks, my body healed itself, but it didn’t heal itself in nice clean lines. My lip has an uneven line of scar tissue where it healed. My chipped tooth remained jagged for most of my childhood. I haven’t gotten a good look at my ankle, but I’m certain that there is residual evidence of the trauma.

When I was fifteen, I got a weight bench for my birthday and set it up in my room. Anyone care to guess what the first thing is that a 15-year-old boy does with a weight bench? That’s right – “Hmm…I wonder how much I can max press?” Combine this curiosity with a general lack of wisdom, and I proceeded to push myself to my absolute limit without a spotter. Next thing I know, 120 pounds landed briefly on my face before adrenaline kicked in and pushed the entire thing up and off to the side. To this day, I still have a jagged scar just under the bridge of my nose.

Wounds heal, but they heal crooked.

In the fall of 2012, my marriage was crumbling. As it fell apart, I treated Tammy with little to no compassion. I was cold and distant. Worse yet, I said and even wrote things that cut to her core and broke her heart. Those words and my actions cannot be undone. But Tammy is gracious and loving and she was willing to give me the opportunity to make it up to her and for us to work as a team to rebuild our relationship. So that’s what we did in earnest throughout all of 2013 and that’s what we continue to do today.

The process of healing deep wounds of the heart is messy. There is no script and no timeline. As the wounds heal, you pass through cycles of hope and doubt, cycles of peace and conflict. There are cycles of anger, cycles of joy, and cycles of heartache. With each happy cycle, we have the opportunity to enjoy each other’s presence and create our new normal. And with each painful cycle, I have the opportunity to delicately cradle her heart in my arms, and mend one of the many cracks or tears that I created with my selfish words and actions.

I don’t know how long the healing process is going to be for us and that doesn’t bother me. I am thrilled that God has blessed me with an amazing wife and that I have a second chance to love her the way she deserves to be loved.

Whatever pain may exist in your marriage, take courage. While nothing that has been done can ever be undone, broken hearts and broken lives can be mended. The process isn’t clean, it isn’t easy, and it isn’t quick. Healing is messy and crooked. It’s takes time, energy, and mountains of patience. But keep pressing on because your marriage can overcome heartache. Your heart can heal. Your soulmate’s heart can heal. Your marriage can heal. Best of all, when you go on that journey of healing together, your bond grows stronger than it ever was before. Scar tissue isn’t pretty, but it is tough. Embrace the crooked journey and love each other like crazy.

My wife and I have an incredibly loving and happy relationship. We are truly each other’s soulmates. But our relationship hasn’t always been so cheerful and the future hasn’t always looked so bright.

Our Video Testimonial

from the Thrive Class we took at Northwood Church in 2013:

The Microwave Version

On December 16th, 2012, we sat down at a Starbucks in Keller, TX to divide assets and discuss how to accomplish an amicable divorce. What started out as a 45-minute business meeting, concluded after 3 hours of crying, praying, and hugging. The next day I got down on one knee, gave her a single rose, and asked her if I could have the honor of winning her back over the course of 2013 and perhaps the rest of our lives. The relationship we have now is rich and full of life, but we didn’t get there overnight. The transformation of our marriage required a lot of crying, praying, talking, reading, praying, laughing, journaling, studying, praying, counseling, and even more praying. God is in the business of fresh starts, second chances, and renewals.

Tammy and I had a broken and battered relationship that had crashed and burned to the ground. But like the mythological phoenix, our new marriage emerged from the ashes. God makes beauty out of ashes. He makes marriages out of messes. And He wants to work a miracle in yours.

The Whole Enchilada

Eager to know more about this awesome couple? You can read our full story for more details.